Archive for category: Political Theory

Critiquing Corbyn: capitalism isn’t about sharing There was much hype over Jeremy Corbyn’s successful campaign to lead the Labour Party. What has been largely absent from the debate is an evaluation of Corbyn’s economic ideas and assumptions. In The Economy in 2020, Corbyn set out what his economic policies will […]

The expanding field of Afro-pessimism theorises the structural relation between Blackness and Humanity as an irreconcilable encounter, an antagonism. One cannot know Blackness as distinct from slavery, for there is no Black temporality which is antecedent to the temporality of the Black slave. Civil society has a perverse and parasitic […]

Every civilisation must decide what is, and what is not, valuable. Marxists occasionally speak of a “law of value.” It is not a concept easily translated into everyday politics, or into our histories of capitalism. It sounds quaint, curiously out of step with our times. And yet the essential insight […]

[youtube width=”590″ height=”332″]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0ShooriD-k[/youtube] I am in a small loft space, accessed by a ladder, carved out of a room used as printing press. The headroom is not there to stand up but perfect for sitting on the floor. By Mumbai’s standards, a generous workspace, relatively tranquil. A man on a […]

“Emancipation is for us the meaning of nihilism.” – Gianni Vattimo What comes after nihilism? This question might seem impertinent given the actual state and trajectory of things. Everywhere traditional, reactionary, and localising ideologies compete, conflict and continue colonising and recolonising the discursive terrains of our political and personal lives. This […]

Nobody could now match those thumbnail portraits of the big picture that Marx could write, but one has to try. Let’s start with the sun, with its energy, stroking the planet, and the warmth of its light, trapped by the atmosphere – the greenhouse effect. A sun whose energy fuels so […]

The demand for “the right to the city” addresses the state in two ways. Firstly, it appeals to the state to grant or uphold a right. Secondly, it is concerned with the privatisation of public spaces or housing i.e., places within the state’s domain. These provide reason enough to ask what […]

I am a salesman, I sell things for a living. What I sell has no importance. Selling is always the same process, with only minor adjustments according to whether you sell cars or paintings, films or hams. What remains the same is the distinctive manner in which the consciousness of […]

“I usually get up at 5 or 5:15am. Historically, I would start sending emails when I got up. But not everyone is on my time schedule, so I have tried to wait until 7am. Before I email, I work out, read, and use our products. … I am not a […]

Community The digital commons is about freedom, sharing, and creating community. Since the advent of the Internet, the concept of community has been less geographical: people gather to share common concerns regardless of physical location, although geographical concerns are certainly one reason why people come together. The word “community” is […]